


like red and yellow and pink and green

by wbso



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Side Staubrey, if you squint really hard - Freeform, really it's all just fluff, side jessley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 07:10:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15019367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wbso/pseuds/wbso
Summary: In which the Bellas find out Beca’s secret or that time the Bellas decided to make their self-proclaimed badass captain cry.





	like red and yellow and pink and green

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Colour by MNEK feat. Hailee Steinfeld

No one questions Beca’s wardrobe with all of it’s dark grays, blacks, navy blues, and the occasional dark purple. They all just assumed that Beca had a really deep goth phase during high school and it’s all leftover from there (with her extra, extra dark eyeliner and her keep away attitude, it wasn’t really a stretch). But really it’s because no one wants to be at the end of her weird moods and get snapped at. **  
**

But Jessica had a theory, but she wasn’t sure and science wasn’t on her side for this one.

So Jessica keeps a close eye on her, trying to see if her hunch was correct.

She notices how Beca hesitates between the two types of milk they have in the fridge; distinct only by the color of the cap or how her hand hovers just for a second over the separate containers of cereal, always lined up against one another, only the sides of their nutritional value in visible sight or how Chloe always has to tell her that the light is green whenever she drives and they’ve stopped at a rare streetlight that has the lights horizontal instead of vertical.

She decides to test her theory one Thursday night, a couple of weeks before Beca’s birthday. She sets up her sketchbook and colored pencils at one corner of their massive coffee table, knowing Thursday is usually when the Bella’s hang around their living area to study, do homework, or just chill. Beca is usually the first one down with Chloe and Ashley a close second.

Like clockwork, Beca comes down in her dark blue sleep shorts and a loose black t-shirt, her laptop tucked underneath her arm, headphones hanging around her ears.

“Hey Jess,” she greets as she takes her usual corner of the loveseat, carefully balancing her laptop on the arm of the chair.

“Hey, Cap!” Jessica greets, though she notices it already fell on deaf ears as Beca’s noise cancelling headphones were already in place.

Pretty soon the living area was either covered by notebooks, laptops, textbooks or a Bella. Even Aubrey, who had the week off from her lodge was there, her head in Stacie’s shoulder as they watched a movie on the laptop that was balanced on Stacie’s lap, legs tangled together, resting much too close to Jessica’s face for comfort.

Jessica glances down at her colored pencils and grabs the purple and the red. She looks around the room, trying to make sure all of the Bellas were busy, not wanting to inadvertently embarrass their captain in case her little hunch was correct (knowing Beca she probably didn’t want to make a big deal out of it).

She bites her lip as she lets her colored pencils go, pushing them towards Beca. She watches it stop right in front of Beca. She waits for a second to see if Beca notices the colored pencils, but when she didn’t, Jessica whispers her name.

“Beca!”

Beca’s eyes never wavers from her screen, fingers still tapping against her keyboard.

Jessica bites her lip, taking another look around their living area to see most of her fellow Bellas still engrossed in their work. She whispers a little louder, flailing her right hand a bit to get her attention. “Beca!”

Beca’s tapping never falters.

Jessica sighs, surreptitiously looks around again. Her eyes accidentally catches Ashley’s confused stare, who was across from her on the other side of the coffee table.

Ashley raises her eyebrows in question, asking silently what she needed.

Jessica shakes her head, giving her a small smile. I’m fine, she mouths. Jessica takes a deep breath and whispers as loud as she can, without alerting the other Bellas. “Beca!”

She sees Chloe, who’s been sharing the small loveseat with Beca, tap Beca with a foot against her thigh, making the smaller girl jump, almost knocking her laptop over.

Beca brings her headphone down to hang around her neck, huffing an annoyed, “What, Chlo?”

Chloe gestures over to Jessica, her eyes still trained on her book.

Beca sighs. “Yes, Jess?”

Jessica gives her a small smile, hoping not to get her head bitten off. “Can you hand me my purple colored pencil?” She points at the two colored pencils that she rolled earlier.

She sees Beca hesitate, her hand hovering over the red colored pencil, uncertainly before Beca scoops both of them up and just offers both of the colored pencils.

“Here you go,” she says, dropping them in her lap.

It was only a second. Just a second, but it pretty much confirmed what Jessica already knew.

Beca was colorblind.

-

-

-

She brings it up to Ashley first when they were tucked into the two twin beds that they pushed together to make a makeshift full. Ashley was writing something in her journal while she was on her phone, scrolling through Instagram (her go-to end of the day activity), double-tapping on a photo of Chloe and Beca, triggering her accidental discovery (she’s been so focused on making sure her latest English essay was perfect that she’s pushed it out of her mind).

“Hey, babe, do you think Cap is colorblind?”

"Chloe?" Ashley's mind drifts too the many colorful attire that the redhead had donned and how she's competently fashion-forward.

"No, don't be ridiculous," Jessica says as she rests her head on Ashley's shoulder, pushing the body pillow they've put in the gap between their bed. "Our other Cap."

Ashley stops writing, her eyes snapping to her girlfriend. Her southern twang prominent when she asks, “Where did you get that idea?”

“Just...a hunch,” Jessica says.  “I asked her to pass the purple colored pencil and-”

“-she gave you the wrong color?”

“No, she gave me both red and purple,” Jessica says.

“Sweetie, that doesn’t really confirm whether or not she’s colorblind,” Ashley says patiently, knowing how excited Jessica gets and usually ends up jumping to the wrong conclusion.

“Yeah, but like-”

“You should ask Chloe,” Ashley says. “You know if it’s Beca related, she probably knows something.”

Jessica sighs but agrees. She gives Ashley a kiss goodnight before she rolls over to go to sleep, mentally telling herself to talk to Chloe about it.

-

-

-

Chloe wonders how they’ve never noticed it before. How she never noticed it before. They spend nearly every waking moment together, save for classes and her job at the radio station. Once Jessica mentioned it to Chloe, it’s all she can think about.

She notices how Beca is extra careful on what she wears, always standing in front of her closet longer than necessary. Chloe used to joke to her that they were all the same color, so just pick one and hurry up. Now she thinks it could be something else.

She notices how Beca always mixes up the red container of white bread with the green container of wheat bread. She never realizes that all her griping about having to transfer each bread into its’ own container might be because of colorblindness and not just pure laziness.

(“Why can’t we just leave them in their bags, Chlo?”

“They’ll look more aesthetically pleasing this way.”

“Aesthetically pleasing my ass.”)

She notices that when they were coloring this one afternoon, (“It’s a great stress reliever, Becs!”) Beca kept reaching for only two colors, yellow and blue, the rest she ignores. Beca was swiping the colors on the picture of a flower she had printed out without a care in the world, not even bothering to stay in the lines, her tongue poking at the side of her mouth.

Chloe stares her, almost as if she can see how Beca’s brain was working.

“Stop being a creep, Beale,” Beca says, her hand never stop swiping at the page with the stubby colored pencils. When she still feels Chloe’s eyes on her, she looks up, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up, dude?”

“What’s the color of my shirt, Bec?”

“That’s not a weird question at all,” Beca jokes, weakly. Chloe instantly feels bad for putting her on the spot like this.

“What’s the color, Becs?”

Beca squints. “Red,” she says confidently.

She says it so confidently that Chloe didn’t have the heart to tell her it was purple.

-

-

-

Chloe confirms it to Jessica the same day that her hunch was correct.

“I just can’t believe I’ve never noticed it,” Chloe says, as she sits on the stool in the kitchen counter as she helps Jessica cook.

Jessica shrugs. “It’s Beca. She’s not really open to these things.”

But it’s me, Chloe wanted to say. Their relationship has always been different no matter how much they insist it wasn’t.

“Do you think she knows?” Chloe mashes the potatoes a little harder than usual, taking her frustration out on them.

“Honestly, I don’t think she does,” Jessica says as she stirs the pot of mac and cheese.

“It would explain her abysmal wardrobe.” Aubrey’s voice makes the other two jump and they look over their shoulder to see her sitting on the dining bench, her laptop propped open.

“How long have you been here?” Chloe asks, breathless as she tries to calm herself.

‘Since you guys started cooking,” Aubrey says, giving them that all too familiar look that they've gotten since the disaster of last year (at least the first half of it). “I said hi to you guys and you said hi back!”

“What’s up, peeps?” Stacie asks as she strides into the kitchen from the back door. She drops her backpack right by the door. “What are we talking about?”

“Put your backpack away,” Chloe automatically says, making Stacie groan as she picks it up, before putting it in a basket near the window seat.

“Beca’s colorblind,” Aubrey informs her.

“Aubs!”

“What? It’s not like it’s a bad thing,” Aubrey says to Chloe. “Besides, they’ll know one way or another with how things spread around this house.”

“Wait since when has Beca been colorblind?” Stacie asks as she drapes herself over Aubrey, pressing a kiss on her cheek.

“Cap is colorblind?!” Fat Amy walks in from the entrance from the living room, Cynthia-Rose and Lily following closely behind. She shrugs. “Explains her driving, to be honest.”

“Oh no,” Cynthia-Rose says. “Is she okay?”

Chloe was giving Aubrey the look-what-you-did-look, sighing. “Yes, we think she’s colorblind, but we’re not sure.”

“Oh she’s definitely colorblind,” Ashley says as she joins the rest of the Bellas, propping herself against the counter.  “I asked her which purple shirt was the best and she pointed at the pink one.”

“Do you think she knows?” Jessica asks again.

“Well that’s a stupid question,” Fat Amy scoffs. “How can you not know you’re colorblind?”

“Who’s colorblind?”

Beca’s voice make all the movement in the kitchen stop as she enters, her brows furrow as she takes in the varying expression of guilt on each of the girls’ faces. Her eyes immediately meets her co-captain’s, asking silently what’s going on.

“Nothing,” Chloe’s voice was high-pitched, her eyes immediately going back down to the potatoes she was mashing lest she gave anything way. “Go wash up, dinner is almost ready.”

Beca’s voice and movement was slow, looking at them, still confused. “Okay.”

All eyes were literally on her as she leaves the kitchen, the girls still quiet. The silence continues as they listen for the slam of the door, indicating that it was safe to talk about their captain. 

“I have an idea!” Stacie says as she goes to Chloe, handing her her phone. “I heard about these glasses and her birthday is coming up.”

Chloe looks at the webpage pulled up, scrolling through Stacie’s through phone. “I think that’s a great idea, Stace.”

-

-

-

“Why do I have to put blindfolds on?” Beca grumps as Chloe helps her out of the car. Chloe had drove her around their neighborhood for at least twenty minutes, only to end up at the lake behind the Bella house. “It’s not a surprise party! I know we’re at the lake! I can smell duck poop.”

Chloe says. “Let me have my fun, Bec.”

Beca sighs exaggeratedly, letting herself be dragged. The sound of the other Bellas talking and yelling at each other instinctively pulls a smile from her lips. She really does love her awesome nerds, something she never thought she would never have.

“Put it on her!” She hears Amy yell.

“Lily get down from there!” Aubrey yells.

She feels something metallic slide on her face, making her jerk against Chloe, thinking it was Lily doing something weird to her. She wouldn’t put it passed her to do something strange to her during her birthday.

“Relax, it’s just me,” Chloe whispers, her voice immediately putting Beca at ease, as she continues to slide the glasses on her face.

“You do now I still can’t see right?” Beca says as she tugs against the blindfold that Chloe has expertly tied on. “Jesus, Beale, were you a girl’s scout or what?”

“Or what,” Chloe says. Beca doesn’t have to be blindfolded to know that Chloe just winked at her. She can feel her face getting hot. 

“Is this what the Captains do in the bedroom?” Stacie teases.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Aubrey shoots back.

Chloe carefully unties the knot she made, making sure she doesn’t knock the glasses on Beca’s face.

When the blindfold was pulled away from her eyes, the first thing Beca sees were her Bellas, differing degrees of excitement on their faces. They all looked like they were about seconds away from bursting.

“Do you see anything different?” Jessica finally asks when no one makes a move towards their captain.

Beca’s eyes furrow, shaking her head. “Just that everything seems darker because you guys put sunglasses on me?”

“Oh,” Stacie says disappointed.

She can see that the answer she gave them dampen the mood a bit, but she was confused. They just put sunglasses on her! An accessory used to block out the sun.

“The sunglasses are great? They’re really blocking out the sun,” Beca tries again unhelpfully; their mood still seems down.

“The box did says it might take 15 minutes for her eyes to adjust,” Aubrey reminded them and that seemed to give the rest of the Bellas hope.

“In the meantime, let’s eat!” Chloe says as she walks towards the picnic tables that had the food on them. She makes a plate of pizza and vegetables for Beca before plating a couple of sandwiches for them to share.

Beca was confused, touching the edges of her sunglasses before following Chloe to the food. She pushes the confusion away and continue to eat the food.

-

-

-

“And she-”

Beca stops short as she looks at Lily, her eyes widening. She reaches up to touch the sunglasses that’s been perched on her face since she arrived. Any tries of putting away had resulted in one of girls telling her to keep it on as she was going to need it. She’s been on edge since then, wondering what they were planning.

Chloe and Jessica exchange a smile as they watch their tiny captain, finally realize what was special with the glasses. The Bellas gentle laughter reaches her ears, but her eyes were still on Lily’s shirt.

“Ohmygod,” Beca says as she continues to gape at Lily’s shirt. She reaches over the picnic table and holds the fabric in her hand. “What color is this?”

“That’s purple,” Stacie informs her, delighted that the glasses started working.

“That’s purple?!” Beca says as she continues to stroke, almost reverently, the fabric in her hand. She shakes her head, befuddled, still trying to take the color in. “Purple is crazy man…”

“So you really are colorblind?” Jessica asks, wanting confirmation that her hunch was right all along.

“Yeah,” Beca nods. “I’ve known because of all those testing they make us do in like elementary school, but I didn’t know-” her voice gets caught in her throat, her eyes wandering to the lake.

“Wha-?” She chokes as she stands up her eyes never leaving the sky. She looks back at her fellow Bellas before she points at it. “What’s going on with the sky? Was a bomb dropped in it?”

The Bellas laugh harder at the astonishment of their tiny captain, a thing that they rarely see.

“That’s the color of sunset, Beca,” Chloe says, gently. She drapes an arm around her, pulling her against her side. She points out the streaks of pink, purple, red, orange, and yellow, meanwhile Beca was next to her, holding her breath.  

Her intake of breath had Chloe laughing as she realizes why she had been so quiet. “Becs, are you crying?”

“Chlo,” Beca chokes out, her voice was thick, “I didn’t know what I was missing."

Beca turns to her head to stare at Chloe again. “Your hair,” Beca says as she reaches up touching Chloe’s hair. Her astonishment had Chloe giggling. “Is this red? Ginger?”

“There are different shades, Becs,” Chloe jokes, the lump in her throat getting bigger as she watches Beca finally see the things she’s been missing. “I take it you like your present?” She reaches over and wipes the small tears that made its way down her face.

Beca nods as her eyes return to the sky as she tries to take in the beauty of it all. It was something that always missing in her life, but she never thought she needed.

“Aw shortstack is crying!” Amy yells to the rest of the girls, making them run towards their captain to see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Group hug!” Stacie yells as she drags the closest person to her which happen to be CR and Lily before all of them envelope a protesting Beca.

-

-

-

Chloe carefully plays tetris with their dishes in the dishwasher, wanting to fit all of them so she doesn’t have to load it again. She checks on the girls first, making sure the ones that drank last night all had pain reliever, water, and a bucket/trash can all within hand’s reach.

She knocks on Amy and Beca’s door before pushing it open. She deposits the items at the floor by Amy’s head before looking over to Beca’s empty bed, surprised that the younger girl was already up. Definitely something that never happened before. Beca loves her sleep.

She searches the common areas before she sees the familiar head of hair pulled up into a bun outside sitting on the porch swing. Chloe makes a couple of hot chocolates for them before she pushes open the door leading to the backyard.

Beca looks up, a notebook on her page, Jessica’s colored pencils right next to her, the glasses still perched on her face. She looks up, immediately spotting the mug in Chloe’s hands. “With mini marshmallows?”

“With mini-marshmallows,” Chloe confirms as she passes one to Beca, carefully pushing the colored pencils, creating a small spot for herself. She glances at the sketchbook in Beca’s hands to see there had been swatches of different colors on it. “Mind blown?” Chloe takes a careful sip of her drink.

“Mind officially blown,” Beca confirms as she looks at the cup and inside the cup as if comparing the two shades of brown. “It’s just so weird. There are different shades of brown!”

“Your poop is going to get a whole lot more interesting, huh?”

Beca laughs, quickly gulping down the hot chocolate to avoid snorting it. “Ugh that’s fucking gross, Beale!”

Chloe laughs. “Hey, you pointed it out!” Chloe takes a sip. “I mean there are different shades of brown, sometimes it can be more green, other times it’s almost neon green.”

“Stop with the poop talk!”

“I was talking about grass!”

Beca scoffs laughs, her belly aching. She looks down at the sketchbook, her fingers moving over the different colors, trying to absorb in her mind how the world actually looks.

They lapsed into silence again as Beca continues to swatch the colored pencils that Chloe recognizes as Jessica’s.

“Why are you up so early?” Chloe asks.

“I wanted to see the sunrise,” Beca admits. “If that sunset looked that epic, I wanted to know if the sunrise did as well.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were colorblind?” It was the question that had been bothering Chloe since Beca confirmed it by the lake.

Beca shrugs. “I mean it never really came up and it’s something that I’ve had for so long and I hated it when people play the ‘what color is this?’ game.” The pitch of her voice heightens as she continues her rant. “Which is a very very mean game to play with a colorblind person because I don’t even know what green looks like Mary Anne!”

Chloe’s eyes were wide and unblinking, shock written across her face as she stares at her rambling co-captain. “Uh…”

Beca’s takes a deep, steadying breath. “I guess it’s just something I learned to keep to myself and pretty soon I forgot that not all the colors were there.” She gives Chloe a shrug, hopefully understanding that it wasn’t something she kept from them on purpose, it was more of a habit by now not to say anything about her colorblindness.

“That’s something you really shouldn’t forget about,” Chloe says, the teasing tone in her voice showing that she’s understood. “I mean you used to drive us!”

“I got us there in one piece, didn’t I?” Beca says, her tone was as teasing as Chloe’s. “I just-” she glances down at Chloe’s smooth skin, noticing for the first time at the pink undertones and the freckles that littered her shoulder. “I- there’s so much color.”

Beca touches her shoulder, her thumb grazing over the freckles.

Chloe wasn’t sure if Beca can hear her sharp intake of breath as well as feel the goosebumps rise on her skin.

“Like you’re pink!” Her voice held an incredulity that was usually reserved for big things like when Amy actually runs with them during cardio or they actually go through a Bellas rehearsal without getting distracted. “Like you’re actually pink, you’re just not one shade, you’re pink and cream and beige and your _hair_ is _orange_ and-”

Beca’s thumb continues to brush against her shoulder, slowly drifting up to Chloe’s neck until she was cupping the back of her it, leaving a tingling sensation on Chloe’s skin, muddling her brain a little.

“Your eyes…” Beca murmurs, the lingering awe still present in her voice. “I...just...they’re so... _blue_..and beautiful...and-” her words tumble over one another as she tries to voice her thoughts. “when they say color is light, I never really got that until now when I saw the color of your eyes. They’re so light and not heavy and _blue_ -”

_BAM!_

They jump apart. Their eyes snap away from each other.

Beca quickly snatches her hands back.  

Chloe’s hand immediately flies to her neck, the skin still tingling where Beca’s hands were caressing her skin.

They look over to see Stacie, Jessica, and Lily giving them a guilty look. Well, Jessica was giving them a guilty look, and Stacie was glaring at Lily. For someone who’s so quiet, she loves to cause some ruckus.

“Damn it, Lily!” Stacie curses, glaring at the girl that just basically pushed her down.

“Something we can help you with?” Chloe raises an eyebrow, waiting for an answer.

“Pancakes are done,” Jessica informs them as she grabs Stacie and Lily and walks them back towards the kitchen. “Sorry for interrupting, Caps!”

“Yeah, Bec, sorry we didn’t know you guys were having a moment,” Stacie calls over her shoulder, giving her a wink. 

Jessica immediately let’s Stacie go once those words leave her mouth, knowing Beca was about to unleash a bout of fury at her. 

Chloe sighs, realizing with that one comment the moment was absolutely ruined (it was already ruined when Lily dropkicked Stacie), but knowing how squirrelly Beca is when one of the girls points out their more-than-friendly moments, there was no going back now.

“Shut up Stacie! You have a stupid orange shirt on!” Beca yells after them, basically flying into their kitchen, hurling insults with a specific color in them.

Jessica gives her an encouraging smile, holding out her arm to her.

Chloe slides gratefully underneath, holding onto Jessica’s hand. At least someone in the Bella household loves physical contact as much as she does. 

Jessica squeezes her shoulder when she lets go of her hand, leading Lily and Chloe back into the house.

“She’ll get there, Cap.”

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into Pitch Perfect. If you guys have any prompts, feel free to hit me up on my tumblr (it's the same as the username here: wbso.tumblr.com). Hope you enjoyed reading! Leave me your thoughts! Thank you for reading.


End file.
